


Adrift, or The Warship's Brother

by alunsina



Category: VIXX
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Angst and Humor, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Character Death, Spaceships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-03 19:03:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8726593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alunsina/pseuds/alunsina
Summary: Warships, loss, and Taekwoon's constant struggle with proper waste disposal in space.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [poundingsound (bluedreaming)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluedreaming/gifts).



> To my dear recipient, you had so many interesting prompts and it was hard to choose! I initially wanted to put them all in the blender but it drifted... Still, even without the otp of your heart, I hope you find this fic enjoyable! Happy Holidays!

 

 

 

All of their warships are dead and Taekwoon is fine.

 

 

*

 

 

Taekwoon is sixteen and an officer-in-training when he last sees his three older sisters. In a propaganda video no less. Outfitted with the biggest plasma cannons and gatling turrets, the elites of the Republic’s attacking fleet, they move together in ghost-silence, shadowless. Their smooth, obsidian-dark bodies look almost invisible as they cleave through deep space, heading towards the Sirius binary star system for battle. 

Six months later the 220-year war comes to a close. They’re on the losing side.

 

 

*

 

 

They don’t make them like they used to; of course it’s still all space-grade titanium alloys, wiring and plumbing that can withstand cosmic radiation, but gone are all the multi-layered shielding, the armor, the plasma weapons. This is the new free galaxy with no use for the trappings of the old and violent era. No use for soldiers nor for ships of war.

What the new free galaxy apparently needs are more orbital debris collectors.

“Who’s recording?” Hakyeon asks the group, holding the helmet up to his face and checking the state of his fringe on the reflective surface. They’re standing on the space station’s loading bay, outside the airlock of their tiny ship, everyone all suited up for deployment. It’s mostly tedious routine work: week in and week out they follow a trajectory hopping from space station to a planet and back to a space station again and then a recycling station, catching and hauling tons of space debris that would otherwise cause collisions and damage to spacecraft and space habitats; the rest of the unrecycled gunk gets burned up in a planet’s atmo or the nearest sun-like star.

Riveting stuff.

Sanghyuk raises a hand. "I am," he says.

Taekwoon raises his hand too.

Hongbin snorts. "This is stupid. Why do we have to document everything again? We're technically just going to take out trash. We're not going to blow up a planet with, I don't know," he looks over at Jaehwan who is struggling to keep a straight face, though there's a telltale foil peeking at the gap of his flight suit, "a loose bolt or hyung's candy wrappers."

"Hey!" Jaehwan says. "See if I give you any chocolate when we're stranded without fuel and suffocating in space."

Wonshik rubs at his temples. "Guys, this entire conversation is going into the ship's log."

"Okay," Hakyeon clears his throat and turns towards them, "quick roll call to satisfy Rovix's log and Control Section, and then we'll do a last round of equipment checks. Han Sanghyuk, please stop focusing on my double chin and can you not record me against the light??!"

Sanghyuk dodges a glove thrown at him and laughs. "Guess I'll go first. Han Sanghyuk, safety and maintenance officer, present."

Hongbin is shaking his head. "Lee Hongbin. Medical officer. Of this glorified space garbage truck I might add. Hyung, isn’t Sanghyuk the least qualified as a safety officer?”

Wonshik coughs and whispers something about the captain’s obvious favoritism. "Kim Wonshik, navigation officer, present."

"Lee Jaehwan! Main pilot! Present~!"

Taekwoon hits Jaehwan in the neck for busting out his eardrums. "Engineer and communications officer. Jung Taekwoon."

Hakyeon stares at him in suspicion so Taekwoon fixes the focus of the recorder back to Hakyeon's face instead of his fascinating company badge. "Cha Hakyeon, captain and reserve pilot of Rovix, present and very much ready to leave this space station like ten hours ago."

"We could have left earlier if you didn't spend hours on your hair," Sanghyuk points out.

"I really don't think this is the time to talk about this," Wonshik says. "We’re still recording!"

Taekwoon punches in the codes to unlock their ship and put them all out of their collective misery.

When they shuffle through the narrow passageways, Taekwoon’s helmet slips from his hands and hits the floor. He hears the hollow crack, the sound echoing and bouncing off the walls, hears the white noise of his coworkers’ voices and nothing else.

Wonshik goes back for him. “Something wrong?”

Too quiet. “I’m fine,” Taekwoon says, picks up and dusts off his helmet. Sometimes he forgets. They don’t make ships the same way anymore. 

 

 

*

 

 

He is six and he goes with his mother to the docking bay to welcome back one of his sisters. There had been a banquet the night before in her honor, with all the eminent government officials in attendance, in celebration of her successful first tour of military duty—second sister linked herself to the house controls and thanked all their guests in her holo form. But this visit is a more intimate affair, just for family.

Taekwoon runs his fingers along one side of the ship’s corridors and a soft laughter reverberates across the walls, echoing in his mind’s ear, and it’s like the air is suddenly suffused with warmth, everything light and golden; the ship asks him with a voice coming light years away, _do you still remember me little brother,_ _I’ve been away for so long_ and _have you been well?_

He does. Mother calls her _Chun-ja_ because she bore her during springtime. To others she is Warship _Aḯdēs_ , the death dealer.

 

  

*

 

 

The new mission brief Control Section sends them onboard is ten pages long and would even take longer if they let Hakyeon do the entire song-and-dance of it, so Taekwoon takes the liberty of informing the crew in the bridge about the changes to their trip: capture the abandoned satellite, be careful of moving parts, launch it to burn in the nearest star.

“That’s very…condensed.” Sanghyuk is puzzling over the ten-pager in his own tablet. He’s flipping a cordless screwdriver slowly in his other hand using whatever small amount of gravity they have on ship and probably violating ten more safety regulations while he’s at it. Hongbin tries to ask for clarification on the ‘moving parts’ just in case he needs to practice attaching prosthesis to the entire team. Jaehwan complains about not really complaining over the implied overtime of two or three days, but can they make a stopover at some station anyway since he thinks they’re running low on supplies?

Hakyeon pats Jaehwan. “You’re not going to die of starvation when pocky runs out, Jaehwannie.”

Wonshik scrolls to the end of the document. “Over at the Sirius system, huh? That’s way out of our usual route. I’d have to redraw and recalculate our path and jump points, man, and we still have to dump our load over at Recycling too. Can’t we pass this on? What did you say to Control about this, hyung?”

Taekwoon shrugs. "I copy?"

Wonshik scratches the back of his head. "I figured."

“They just want us to chuck the whole thing at a star? Isn’t that wasteful?” Sanghyuk asks, looking up at them and tapping at the paragraph in question.

"They suspect it's an old military spy satellite that wandered off its original orbit. It might contain sensitive information that’s in violation of peace treaties," Hakyeon starts, his smile thin and razor-sharp, "which you would've all known about if you've let me do the team briefing like a proper captain."

“Three hours in and we would still be doing ice breakers and team building exercises,” Hongbin says, an accurate summary of that dark and terrible time they let Hakyeon do his job ‘properly’.

In the ship's kitchen, Hakyeon follows Taekwoon in as he goes about making his morning coffee.  Taekwoon sees him take banana milk out of a compartment, pop a straw in it, then hook his feet on a foothold to steady himself and watch Taekwoon struggle. Instant coffee packets, no espresso machines in low G, but Taekwoon can't find the milk and he's not in the mood to add banana milk in his. Hakyeon is taking long and thoughtful sips like he's waiting for something to crack.

"What?"

Hakyeon points to the milk tube floating over Taekwoon's head. Rovix isn’t doing very well at keeping the G even throughout parts of the ship. He should look into that.

"That satellite has the Republic logo on it. You knew that right? Were you worried?" Hakyeon asks, still infuriatingly sipping banana milk with a loud slurping noise.

“Debris is debris, military satellite or not.” Hot water. Coffee powder. Milk. All of it goes into his tumbler.

“I wonder if it’s still working. With some power left we can look into its transmissions or—”

“Go away, Hakyeon.”

Hakyeon throws his trash in the waste receptacle. “Our dongsaengs can help, too. They’re team. You can tell them.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Taekwoon says. “It’s a decade ago anyway.”

Hakyeon nods like Taekwoon scored a point off of him and unhooks his feet from the foothold. “Okay. I’ll go check on the bridge. See how they’re doing. Remember to clean up after, hmm?” He turns to leave the kitchen.

“Hakyeon-ah,” Taekwoon calls after him. He tries to loosen his fingers around the tumbler. Hakyeon grips the doorway to stop himself from drifting too far. “I’ll be cooking.” He gestures at the kitchen, an open question.

“I want reconstituted scrambled eggs on reconstituted toasts,” Hakyeon smiles, this time it reaches his eyes. Apology accepted. “Shall I go ask the others what they would like then?”

“Yeah.”

 

  

*

 

 

As orbital debris collectors they pull in a number of different things: spent rocket stages, leaked coolant, nuts and bolts and the odd solar panel from an old satellite, a torn wing from a dead space shuttle, a whole dead space shuttle, equipment and personal items lost in space.

“Hey guys, free toothbrush.” Wonshik makes a grab at it, thrusters working hard under his forearms and boots to help him move through vacuum, then he waves the thing back at them in triumph. One man’s garbage, a Wonshik’s treasure, or possibly the other way around. In his white EVA suit he looks like a space mascot advocating for oral hygiene.

Inside the ship Hongbin steals the headset from Hakyeon, who’s in charge of heckling the dongsaengs doing the debris-picking and therefore has a monopoly of the ship comms, so he can speak to the mouthpiece and yell at Wonshik in distilled rage. “That’s disgusting! That’s not what I meant by reusing things!”

Sometimes they come across a dead body or two. 

“He got preserved inside,” Sanghyuk reports, peering into the only transparent part of the escape pod and trying to provide the entire bridge with exquisite close-ups using his helmet cam. Jaehwan claims space sickness and heads for the vomit room.

“Is there anything there we can use to ID him?” Hakyeon asks.

Wonshik replies with a negative. “We can’t see anything much from here unless we bring this up to Rovix and force it open.”

“It’s not safe to open that onboard. We don’t know what he died of,” Hongbin says.

They end up calling local authorities to take the escape pod off their hands and have them trace and contact any existing relatives.

Back at the ship, Wonshik takes off his EVA helmet, his eyes suspiciously shiny. “That’s kind of sad, isn’t it? His family didn’t know how long he’s been out here and he really worked hard trying to get back home.”

Jaehwan tips back his chair. “We don’t even know if he has family. What if he’s like a bad person trying to escape the law?” Hakyeon hits him. “What? Why am I the one who’s always getting hit around here?”

Wonshik looks down at his hands, still fiddling with his helmet. “I would want my sister to know right away if something’s happened to me. I don’t want to think of her just waiting back home and always wondering.”

“At least the family has a body now.” Taekwoon shrugs.

 

  

*

 

 

Taekwoon is seventeen. The night before their military training outpost is seized by enemy forces, he sits alone in his rooms and waits for orders that will never come.

Until his doors slam open. No knocking. Not even a polite form of address.

"I didn’t know anybody was still here." Framed by the doorway and lit up by the hallway lights, Taekwoon spots Cha Hakyeon. He's wearing civvies. "Aren't you leaving? They'll be swarming here and stripping down the place soon."

“I haven’t-“ What Taekwoon means to say is that he hasn't finished packing yet but that would be a lie; his father was a known war general, his mother was a shipmind-bearer, his sisters are weapons of the Republic, he can’t just- He is wringing something solid in between his hands, feels it make deep indentations into his palms. He must be doing it too hard because Hakyeon’s eyes get drawn to it and he’s wincing.

“May I?”

Taekwoon hesitates for a moment then hands it over.

"What’s this?" Hakyeon holds the object up for a better look and reads off the painted name at the side, " _Zeal without humanity is a ship without rudder.”_

“That’s her name.”

“This is beautiful, Taekwoon-ssi.”

“It’s a scale model of a warship.” A very accurate scale model of his eldest sister at least. She gave it to him for his tenth birthday.

(He found it after crawling into one of her compartments under the navigation controls, a surprise wrapped in brown paper and blue ribbon, and Taekwoon asked her, _can Zeal noona go inside one of these models_ , and he could hear her sigh in the ventilated air and he tried again, _can I just stay in the compartment maybe I can go with you to space_ , and she finally answered: _listen you brat, I adore you but my captain will kill us both now get out before we're caught_ , and, _here, if you press right here the whole thing falls apart and then you can put it together again, pretty cool huh?_ )

How do you put things back together if you’re missing all the pieces? Taekwoon puts both of his hands to his face. The heels come off wet.

"My sister's in-laws live in neutral territories," Hakyeon starts when Taekwoon has gotten hold of himself. A sister. All flesh and blood probably. Not a shipmind. "They've offered me protection. We can send a message from there to other survivors without getting intercepted."

Taekwoon doesn't look at Hakyeon but says, "Thank you”. He reaches out for the nearest duffel bag he has thus far ignored, starts to stuff it with clothes, the other warship scale models given to him, the trinkets and data sticks and mementos he brought as personal items. Hakyeon helps him out to speed up the process.

 

 

*

 

 

He regrets ever meeting Hakyeon. Possibly the entire crew.

Rovix hovers loaded and waiting above the stumpy gray monolith of Alpha Centauri’s Recycling Station. Both Sanghyuk and Wonshik are outside in their EVA suits and look to be, at least from the grainy view of the ship, playing a game of slow-mo tag over their netted haul of space debris. Hongbin is missing. Hakyeon has spent most of the hour catching up with another communications officer over their comms and talking about perfumed candle-making of all things.

“I copy,” Taekwoon says into his headset, looks to the front of the bridge. “Recycling Station gave their okay. They've opened the containment unit for us. What's the ETA for the drop-" He almost bites his tongue off as Jaehwan's hand shoots up dangerously close to his face.

"Captain, just say the word and my powers shall be at your disposal," Jaehwan intones.

“Two minutes? Maybe five?” Taekwoon turns to Hakyeon in an open bid for some levity in this situation, but seeing the mock-grave expression on Hakyeon’s face it’s probably a little too late.

“Lee Jaehwan, indeed, your time has come,” Hakyeon says.

“My captain! I am ready!”

“Jaehwannie!”

Taekwoon heaves out a very long sigh and tells Recycling: “Please give us half an hour.” He can’t help but feel extra betrayed when Hongbin enters the bridge carrying a bag of chips and a bottle of soda, strapping himself cheerfully onto a seat.

“It’s like watching a movie,” Hongbin reasons out and doesn’t even care to share his snacks.

The long winding space sageuk of Hakyeon and Jaehwan comes to a climax with them operating Rovix’s Remote Manipulator (“Jaehwan, release The Arm,” Hakyeon orders and everyone else echoing “THE ARM” in varying degrees of loudness),  said robotic arm dragging their huge load of debris over to Recycling's containment unit, further unnecessary dramatic tension ("But what about the children, captain??" Jaehwan says of Wonshik and Sanghyuk hanging onto the end of the robot arm), and actual drama ("Uh, hyung, this isn't supposed to come off right?" says Wonshik, holding up a piece of distressed metal claw in his gloves).

Hakyeon regains his sanity for a moment to scold them. "Yah! We're supposed to take out debris not make more of them!"

Taekwoon unstraps himself from his seat, resigned, and goes to get his tools for repair without waiting for orders.

Working outside is no different from staying cooped up in Rovix, no coolness or breeze running through the back of Taekwoon’s neck, no change in pressure or oxygen levels. EVA suits are very much like personalized spaceships—its own warming and cooling systems, emergency self-repair modules, batt pack for power, his own captain. He works facing the robot arm, back to the stars, a long safety line trailing from his suit and tethering him to the side of the ship. Sanghyuk is holding the repair kit up to him like a baby bird. The robotic claw had snapped clean off the hinge, nothing too complicated than taking out screws and replacing the claw. They work companionably next to each other in silence.

“Hyung, you don’t really like working out here, don’t you?” Maybe not so silent after all. Sanghyuk hands him the low-torque screwdriver and Taekwoon grips it gratefully to buy him more time to think. “Wonshik hyung does most of the debris-picking and EVA work in your place when he can.”

“And Hongbin? Hakyeon?”

Minute gestures are imperceptible when you’re inside the suit but Taekwoon can almost hear him shrug. “Too self-conscious and nervous about the thrusters. Hakyeon hyung’s too scared.”

“Jaehwannie?”

A laugh and Sanghyuk says, “I’m sorry. He’s a safety hazard outside.” with the confidence of one safety hazard identifying the other. “Okay, maybe Hakyeon hyung isn’t that much scared since he chose this job.”

 _You’re not scared though_ , is the unspoken between them. Taekwoon slides the new claw in place and drives the screws home with controlled efficiency—he doesn’t want to break the screws and create more debris, he’s in the business of space clean up and putting things together after all, it wouldn’t do. There’s a kind of comfort in the work no matter how mundane it can be. It’s tangible. You can learn and get better at it. It’s something you can control with your own two hands.

Perhaps this is where Sanghyuk has him wrong. Taekwoon’s fear is much less obvious than Hakyeon’s.

“It’s tedious. Suiting up,” Taekwoon answers instead. “You like the work?”

“Of course! It’s amazing! I’m in space and I get paid for it!” Sanghyuk's eyes are bright even behind the visor of his helmet and Taekwoon wonders if he'd ever looked outside himself in similar breathless wonder, to focus on the stars and other astronomical bodies, the possibilities stretching limitless in all directions, and not see the waves of the encroaching dark, not feel rudderless with no promise of land.

 

 

*

 

 

Taekwoon is thirteen and third sister comes back planetside in a bad way, in a wrong shape, from her latest campaign. She crashes more than lands at their family’s designated docking bay, shouts rather than sends a discreet civilized message through house control. Taekwoon has to go out and leave the guests, rushing out in his mourning clothes, just to make sure they aren’t under any surprise attack by their enemies.

 _GREETINGS, UNNIES SEND THEIR DEEPEST REGARDS AND CONDOLENCES,_ third sister blasts past the armed men stumbling out of her way, the words searing Taekwoon’s mind and everyone’s, as she crushes a few feet more of concrete. There’s smoke and fire coming out of her hull. _MY APOLOGIES FOR MY ABRUPTNESS AND FOR BEING LATE. BUT SHIP ENGINEERS HAVE TRICKED ME WITH THEIR DUBIOUS MAGIC AND INSISTED THAT I COULDN’T POSSIBLY SURVIVE ONE MORE JUMP-_ There’s an ear-shattering static noise, the thread of her thoughts cuts off, the almost luminol glow of her dims, and she powers down. From her side, a dark armor plating falls off and makes another dent on the concrete.

He coaxes her back online when the guests have all been sent home, his knees turning soot-black from her bridge floor. It’s a good thing he kept his mourning clothes on. Stains and soot don’t show all that much in black and he hasn’t much clean clothes to spare nowadays.

“Don’t shout,” Taekwoon reminds her when she blinks all her systems awake, the rest of her joining in the discordant harmony of distressed metal, leaking coolant, her gears moving not quite in tandem with each other. “You’re broken,” he adds, noticing for the first time the dent in her walls, the warped doors, he can feel the spider-web cracking of her screens when he runs a hand over them. There’s a large stain underneath the commander’s chair, dark and sticky.

_And honorable mother has passed away, our sisters are trapped fighting at the frontlines, and there is no daughter by her side. My ‘brokenness’ seems like a minor detail._

“You skipped out on the engineers,” Taekwoon accuses.

If only a ship could shrug. _When they make your adolescent brother look competent I simply had no other choice. Taekwoon? What. Hey. Please don’t smear your face on my controls, it’s said to be very unhygienic!_

Taekwoon doesn’t look up. The walls heave a stuttered and pained rasp. Processors straining.

_Ah. I have made you worried._

“I’d been waiting. I thought-” Taekwoon says.

_I came here as fast as my drives could take me._

“I’m not very good in fixing things yet. I’m still learning.”

_I am sorry._

“I’d been waiting all this time.”

 

 

*

  

 

They emerge in the Sirius system, hovering above a young uninhabited planet, and inspect their target. The satellite is easily twice as long as Rovix, stretching barbell-like with pockmarked solar panels at both heavy ends, orbiting low and ripe for collisions with any unsuspecting jumping ships. In its middle are the ‘moving parts’—a rotating arm or whatever those engineers were thinking—making a full revolution once every two minutes. It has rocket boosters. The satellite’s surface looks battered and beaten from too many collisions with micro-meteorites.

There’s a large metal sheet stabbing its head.

“Our huge debris has a huge debris in it,” Jaehwan says like he just found something distasteful in his packet of reconstituted beef. He steers them towards the satellite in question, sliding under the shadows of the planet, untouched by the light from the brightest and closest star, Sirius A.  “I’m surprised it still has power. It’s not going to explode or attack us, is it?”

“Gee hyung,” Sanghyuk rubs his chin, “a military satellite with a very long rotating metal arm, surely it’s safe?”

Hongbin parks himself at the back, wordlessly readying his medkit and some robotic tubes that strangely resemble prosthetic limbs.

Despite safety concerns Hakyeon reassures them that Control Section wouldn’t actually send them off to die even if they did make them all sign up for medical life insurance and points out there aren’t any weapon systems installed on the satellite. Taekwoon can feel Hakyeon’s elbow digging at his side.

“Just need to turn off that rotating arm.” When Taekwoon stops and doesn’t quite make the expected follow-up, there’s that elbow again. “Then reprogram the rocket boosters and link it up to Rovix’s controls.”

“Oh! So after, we can control the satellite from here?” Jaehwan stares down at the steering in his hands. “Great idea! I’m very good at driving things into stars.”

“Please don’t. My expertise can only go so far,” Hongbin says in alarm.

When Sanghyuk and Wonshik both leave to suit up, Hakyeon calls Taekwoon’s attention, “Taekwoon, back them up. You know that thing better than they do.” He turns to Jaehwan before Taekwoon can voice out his refusal. “Think you can get us super close without getting hit by that arm?”

 

 

*

 

The three of them make their cautious way to the satellite with short controlled bursts from their thrusters. The hardest part isn’t negotiating around the dreadful rotating arm of DOOM, Jaehwan’s words, but finding purchase on the satellite and trying to locate its controls. Taekwoon splits them up for the search: Wonshik and Sanghyuk stay at the tail end while Taekwoon goes further for the structure’s head.

Wonshik finds the controls first but the screens are sluggish from disuse. “Do I just mash the buttons hoping something will happen? I’m not really sure of what I’m doing here!”

“You need help there, Wonshik?” Taekwoon asks.

“Wait.”

The rotating arm loses momentum and stops.

 

 

*

 

 

Over their comms:

“Hakyeon hyung.”

“Wonshikkie! Yep?”

“I was thinking, you and Taekwoon hyung are both from military families, right?”

“Well, yeah. Our families served. It’s mandatory where we came from.”

“Isn’t it weird coming across your military equipment as debris? Doesn’t it make you wonder about what happened?”

 

 

*

 

 

Sirius A peeks through their side of the planet and the satellite is awash in starlight. Wonshik is still flailing at the controls.

Hakyeon is talking again. “Guys, come back inside for a sec. We’re seeing clusters of micro-debris heading towards your location. You might get hit if you stay there long. You all copy?”

“Copy. We’re returning to base,” Taekwoon says.

Sanghyuk zips back in record time and talks about having a snack or three while Wonshik sounds disgruntled as he heads towards Rovix. “Ahh this is such a hassle. We’re not going to start all over again are we? Those things were confusing.”

“We’ll just have to come back for it later.” Light falls squarely on Taekwoon's visor and he uses his hands to block it off more from reflex than necessity. He takes a quick survey of his surroundings to make sure that nothing is amiss. Everything is thrown into stark relief, all harsh glaring light and inky darkness at the corners where the starlight doesn’t reach. Except. Taekwoon stops. He zooms into his visuals.

"Sanghyuk is threatening to eat all your cookies, hyung! And by Sanghyuk I really mean me," Jaehwan sounds out in his ear.

The large sheet metal debris, jutting sharply from the satellite at an angle, casts no shadow.

“Hey Taekwoonie, cutting it a bit close are you? Hurry up and clear out of there. Taekwoon? Do you read me?”

Scattered throughout the satellite’s surface are little fragments of the same metal. Obsidian-dark. Shadowless. Like no material ships are made of these days.

He takes a leap closer to inspect the large debris.

“Taekwoon, what’s happening? Wonshik, get him! He’s breaking off!”

The paint is chipped and peeling.

“-not enough time to turn back, damn it I-”

But he can make out a word.

“-it’s intersecting-  -your orbit- -hear me?”

Fill in all the missing letters.

“-closing in!”

 

> _Kratos_

“Taekwoon!”

He reaches out a hand to touch.

 

 

*

 

 

The micro-debris punctures his EVA suit at three points—shoulder, hip, calf—in what seems like perfect symmetry.

The tips of his gloves brush the edge of the large metal debris. Third sister’s armor. Taekwoon tries to say _I’m here_ but he can only taste the moisture boil out of his tongue. In the seconds before he blacks out he thinks of her dying, of all his sisters dying the same way in space, insides going hot and cold, body swelling and breaking apart at the joins.

 

 

*

 

 

He is six, ten, thirteen, fifteen. Taekwoon is done with waiting so he slips into a military training outpost and enlists, even if his mother had bargained for his exception in exchange for having carried to term three powerful warships. Because what is freedom if he allows his sisters to fight on their own?

 _You fucking idiot_ , gone is the fondness in eldest sister’s tone, _did mother’s sacrifice mean nothing to you?_ He tries to stand his ground in the outpost’s visiting room; it’s not as terrifying as facing down Zeal’s ship-body but her holo, her soft face, she looks so much like mother. _Do you wanna die?_

Second sister comes in between them. _Let him explain first. It’s a mistake, right Taekwoonie? You just joined R &D, not-_

“I’m an officer-in-training,” Taekwoon says and second sister’s face chip and crack like delicate ceramic, “s-so I can serve in a warship. In two years they say I’ll be ready to fight alongside-” 

_Slaughter, you mean_. Eldest sister stands back and appears to relish Taekwoon’s choked silence. _What did you think we were doing out there? You think Aḯdēs_ , she gestures at second sister, _made worlds submit by singing them lullabies? Kratos wiped civilizations with her vocabulary?_

 _I must say this family meeting is going extremely well,_ third sister pipes up.

Zeal’s laughter is much sharper than what Taekwoon’s used to from her, the sister who brought back many trinkets and souvenirs in her ‘travels’ when Taekwoon was a child, the sister whom he admired, looked up to. _It’s the young officers who get their hands bloody, who gets thrown out the airlock first when things go south. You think there’s something romantic and noble about that? You must be shitting me._

During enlistment they asked him why he still wanted to join despite his exception and it’s always been this: to follow in his sisters’ path, wherever it may take him, because they’re what he has left.

Taekwoon already made his decision long ago. “I’m not leaving,” he says.

 

 

*

 

_WAKE UP_

 

*

 

 

Sixteen and he is watching propaganda videos in the mess hall with other trainees. Someone comments how it’s supposed to boost morale. Another asks how huge Taekwoon’s house have to be to accommodate warships during family dinners. Everyone around the table laughs. 

“Don’t you miss them sometimes though? Your family?” asks Cha Hakyeon, a fellow cadet who roomed a couple of doors away. He’s been known to send video letters back home every week, a foreign concept for Taekwoon who hasn’t spoken to his sisters for a year. Hasn’t properly bid them farewell when they left. Always leaving. His sisters coming and going and they don’t want him to follow.

He nods, silent, eyes on the screen as the three warships disappear into a hyperspace jump.

  

 

*

  

_WAKE UP_

 

*

 

 

Taekwoon opens his eyes, his hands on the large debris.

Hongbin’s voice is in near-panic over the comms. “Self-repair modules finally kicked in—wait, isn’t the batt pack heavily damaged?! Suit recovering from depressurization. Heart rate unstable. Respiration also unstable. But he’s conscious. He’s awake! He’s back online—hyung, hang on!”

Rovix makes its approach, the ship looming larger and larger in his visuals, its robotic arm unfolding outward. There are a thousand different alarms competing for Taekwoon’s attention but he’s vaguely aware that he’s losing altitude. Is the satellite falling?

Sanghyuk. “Can you hear us? Use your thrusters!”

“Captain!” It’s Jaehwan, stripped of all the affectations of a space opera actor, “He has breached the boundary. He’s falling into the planet’s atmosphere!”

“Wonshik, grab Taekwoon, hurry!” Hakyeon says. Wonshik? Taekwoon looks up again and there, strapped to the end of the robot arm, is Wonshik with his arms reaching out towards him.

“Give me your hand!”

Falling and falling. Friction against his suit. His suit starting to burn around him and he can’t feel anything but the hard desperate clench of his gloves on sister’s armor.

Wonshik tries again, “We’re not leaving you to die out here! Your hand!”

Rovix’s tail catches fire from atmospheric entry, glowing red and orange in his screen, sparks trailing in the sky and turning to ash. Rovix is a space-bound ship. It isn’t designed to handle this kind of abuse. Rovix can’t possibly survive this.

Taekwoon closes his eyes and lets go of the debris.

“Got him!”  Wonshik shouts back.

Hakyeon doesn’t sound like he has relaxed much. “I’m holding the robot arm steady. We’re not out of the woods yet. We lost too much velocity to break away easy. Jaehwan—”

“Gotta muscle our way up then! Leave it to me, captain.” Jaehwan says.

Taekwoon can feel Rovix straining to gain altitude, the robotic arm shaking but enduring, Wonshik tightening his hold. He braces himself.

“Rovix! We can’t let a bit of gravity bring us down! Come on!”

Taekwoon takes one last look at the satellite falling away behind him.

 

 

*

 

 

What comes after is a lot of sleeping, Taekwoon slipping into and out of consciousness—one minute he’s onboard Rovix, another he’s blinking up at a nondescript white ceiling, and on one terrible occasion it seems like Rovix is in flames around him, hull breached, walls splintering apart in the vacuum, and every one of those stupid idiots is dead and it’s all because of him—

“That’s depressurization sickness talking,” Hongbin says as Taekwoon jolts awake from the hospital bed like he’s suffering from a heart attack. “Could be the tachycardia. Or the punctured lung. Did you know your calf blew up twice its size? The swelling has gone down now and we didn’t amputate, so no prosthetics.” He is still so out of it he can’t tell if Hongbin is happy or sad about that last part.

“Spare me the details,” Taekwoon says because he’s starting to feel all of it. He’s aching everywhere. Like a toddler just pulled him apart and mashed him back to some humanoid shape.

“The doctor says you’re going to be okay in a few days though.” Hongbin smiles, bright and pleased, and pats the empty spot near Taekwoon’s head instead of his aching shoulder. “Good to have you back, hyung. I’ll tell the others you’re awake.”

“Brat,” Taekwoon says under his breath, but is relieved just the same.

Rovix, on the other hand, didn’t fare as well.

“It’s gone to junk. We’re all grounded in the meantime,” Sanghyuk blurts out in the middle of one particularly vicious game of Go-Stop in Taekwoon’s hospital room, where everyone is sporting a swollen forehead from all the hard flicks and blatant cheating.

“Rovix isn’t junked! It’s just,” Wonshik surveys the cards on the floor, “its body is being replaced?”

Hakyeon puts up both of his hands like he’s seen something horrible pass Taekwoon’s face and wants to appease him. “It’s fine. Rovix’s original body is getting on anyway and the company will be fitting it with a new one. It will just take some time.”

“And some pay cuts,” Hongbin says.

Taekwoon sits up and ignores the twinge in his spine. “I’m so sorry.” His neck, his face, his ears are burning. “I shouldn’t have— This shouldn’t have happened.”

Jaehwan snorts. “What’s a pay cut among friends?” He slams a card down in victory. “Also, I win. Pay up. Gotta get those snack money somehow.”

While they sort out the winnings and dole out the punishments, in which Sanghyuk is Jaehwan’s head flick executioner due to sheer finger power (“Hakyeon hyung, come back! It doesn’t really hurt much! See?”), Wonshik, still rubbing the sore spot on his forehead, says, “I still find it amazing that you didn’t get permanently injured in the suit. When you blacked out, we- we got really worried. It’s a miracle you woke up so quickly.”

They watch Sanghyuk tackle Hakyeon. Someone yells bloody murder.

Taekwoon starts shuffling the cards for the new round, trying to tamp down his amusement. “You were all shouting at me to wake up. So I did.” But when he looks back at them, at Wonshik, Jaehwan and Hongbin, even Hakyeon who stopped trying to throw off Sanghyuk from his back, all Taekwoon can see is confusion and surprise on their faces.

“But hyung,” Jaehwan ventures, breaking the silence, “it couldn’t have been us you heard. While you were out, your comm was down the entire time.”

 

 

*

 

 

Twenty-six. His sisters, as always, are trying to protect him. This much is true. (He understands it now.)

All of their warships are dead. And maybe someday, in some other time, or maybe never, but eventually, hopefully, with friends, Taekwoon will be fine.

 

 

 

 

The end

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to the mods for their patience and encouragements. Thank you to alphabet 1 for cheering me on, sprinting with me, for being a sounding board for one of the sisters, and for the grammar lesson; thank you also to alphabet 2 for being excited about communications officer Jung Taekwoon (even if the orig joke is lost now) and for their support <3\. 
> 
> This is heavily influenced by the anime Planetes and Aliette de Bodard's Xuya universe.


End file.
